A Typeface for print and screen by Felix Braden and Alex Rütten.
Bubbling, strong, but very accurate. Created with much fine tuning and precision. It has origin broad nib taste and is smooth like butter while reading.
About Tuna
Tuna is simply a contemporary body text font. It is contemporary, meaning the merge of charming broad-nibbed calligraphic
style with optimized legibility on screen – showing that the roots of writing and typesetting are still in charge when reading
“Anna Karenina” on a kindle till 4 o’clock in the morning.
Tuna has a natural fit for cross-media use because the design is based on forms characterized by different conditions of
consistency, stability and good legibility. Well defined shapes and distinctive details only become apparent when used in larger
sizes, making Tuna a true all-rounder.
With more than 700 glyphs in 10 styles created with a maximum of consideration, it has all the qualities of a modern OpenType
font serving the needs of todays communication.
The historical background
A steep pen-angle is a design feature that was much more pronounced with the ancestors of todays serif typefaces. The calligraphic models such as the
“Roman Rustica”, the “Half-Uncial” or the “Carolingian minuscule” have all significantly slanted pen angles – some even steeper than 45°.
With the spread of the printing-press during the following centuries, writing angles became far less slanted, finally ending in an nearly perpendicular
axis during the classicist period in which the similarities of letterforms were emphasized.
This development was seen in a critical light in later years. The objection was that François Ambroise Didot, the famous french printer, had pushed
the art of printing and cutting letters to a destructive ultra-perfection. Studies of that time led to the insight that these developments did not
necessarily contribute to enhancing legibility.
A second source of inspiration was Roger Excoffons extraordinary draft “Antique Olive”. There are many articles about type-design that mention
the horizontal elements of a typeface – for example the serifs – as being an important part of a good text typeface; they enhance the ability
of the reader to track the line of type. Nevertheless, we were impressed by the good legibility of sans serif typefaces that emphasize horizontal
elements (for example “Balance” by Evert Bloemsma, “Signo” by Rui Abreu or “Laika” by Jens Gehlhaar).
In the context of screen-optimizing, the idea of a weight shift in favor of the horizontal is given special relevance – the same line widths in the
vertical and horizontal elements of the font can be mapped perfectly on a rasterized grid.
How it works
Each writing tool creates characteristic shapes. On a small pixel matrix Tuna’s shapes fit best, because vertical and horizontal strokes are almost equal.
I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.
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Weight Overlay
Type a letter to view the specific character weights
Optimizing for on-screen reading
The reading of longer texts on a screen has become an everyday issue — in the subway you’ll recognize the winner in the
fight digital versus paper. Web Fonts are completely established, more and more content is offered for reading on tablets
or mobile devices. For this reason, demands on typefaces for that field of use have grown steadily. As mentioned above,
we worked with ancient writing principles during the design process, aiming to fulfill the needs of a contemporary
typeface.
Despite that fact, most typefaces were not especially designed for a digital environment. Often it’s a post-design task
to improve legibility on screen using technical solutions such as hinting. But screen-optimization has to start earlier.
There were a few key-characteristics that we defined as our basic design rules to achieve extraordinary legibility.
Large counters & generous x-height
Large counters and open letter forms with wide apertures increase legibility because they form distinctive shapes und
therefore are important for individualizing the glyphs. Tuna has also a generous x-height in comparison with the typeface’s
ascenders and descenders. The increased x-height allows for adequate whitespace of the counter forms.
Individual letterforms
This works quite simply: If characters are too similar, you will have to re-read a word. If the word-image is not clear
enough, it will simply take more time to read it; especially if it includes difficult candidates like uppercase ‘I’ and
lowercase ‘l’. It was important for the design to keep the variety of glyphs throughout the whole character set.
Squared roundness
The more angular a curve is, the better it will fit into the pixel grid. So circular forms are taken as close to the
edges as possible. Obviously that leads to a bigger counter form inside.
Moderate contrast & strong serifs
A common problem for display-qualities are thin lines and small punches. Hairlines tend to disappear at smaller sizes
or under bad conditions, for instance in newspaper-print or on illuminated screens. Characters seem to fall apart into segments.
Low stroke contrast will solve that problem. This attribute is mainly associated with sans-serif typefaces, but could be
integrated in a serif design too – even combined with a calligraphic touch.
Rational angles
Angles with a ratio of whole numbers have a better reproduction on screen because they relate to the pixel grid. In the
first step we went slightly too far – we were forcing the letter strokes into grid. The letters turned out to be too static and uniform.
So we decided to take a little more of a relaxed stance to the paradigm of rational angles.
Simplicity
Too many details blur the appearance in common reading font sizes; they interfere with the basic letter form, which is important
for identifying the character quickly – simplicity works to benefit the word image.
Manual hinting
Tuna has a manually optimized TrueType hinting and was improved especially for the use in font sizes between 9 and 14 points.
On screen, however, the letterforms have to be translated into pixels in a more or less coarse grid. Font hinting is a process
by which letters are adjusted individually in different sizes to line up with a rasterized grid. Improving the quality in low
screen resolutions, hinting is critical for producing clear, legible text. For each letter specific instructions can be stored,
as the character is to be displayed in a specific font size on the pixel grid.
During font hinting, the consistency of letterforms is often sacrificed by changing the outline, aiming for better legibility.
As a result the outlines look quite different in different sizes and may differ from the original letterform.
Tuna takes the opposite approach: The letterforms use various design features – as listed above – to avoid classical
“danger zones”. The rendering of hairlines, for example, needs no corrections if they are already strong enough. Because of that
no changes to letterforms are needed even at small sizes, and the character of the font is retained and stays very much the
same in any environment and size.
Nevertheless, we did not rely on automatically generated hinting. We put the hinting process in the hands of Jan Gerner
(Yanone), who did a good job. Tuna was optimized especially for ClearType and DirectWrite (the glyph rendering API of Microsoft).
Available Weights
The family comes in five weights: Light, regular, medium, bold and black. All weights can be combined with each other,
but during the design process certain weights were adjusted to each other. Tuna-Regular is matched to Tuna-Bold,
Tuna-Light was paired with Tuna-Medium and Tuna-Medium with Tuna-Heavy. So if you for example want to stress one word
in a text set in Tuna-Regular, use Tuna-Bold in combination.
The different weights were interpolated from two poles. The intermediate steps were calculated based on Luc(as) de
Groot's theory. According to this formula (B=√(A÷C)), which generates a exponential increase, the weights
can be clearly distinguished optically from each other.
Despite the logic of that theory, the purely mathematical calculation led to too little differentiation within the
light weights and extreme results in the stronger weights. Therefore Tuna follows an adjusted and slightly flattened
interpolation curve.
tunatunaLight
tunatunaNormal
tunatunaMedium
tunatunaBold
tunatunaHeavy
Maguro
Rückenflosse
Der servierfertige pikante Genuss
Overfishing
Longlined bigeye
Großaugen
In Aufguss und eigenem Saft
Explotación
solid pack in soybean oil
Character-set
Besides that fact that Tuna offers Small Caps, various styles of numerals and mathematical signs as well
as common currency symbols, it has a wide range of language support. To meet the needs of global communication,
Tuna supports all western-, eastern- and central-european languages.
The OpenType format allows you to include different character variants within a single font file,
so that there is no need to have separate fonts for Tabular Figures, Old Style Figures, Small Caps
and so on. The desired format can be activated within the layout application (such as Adobe InDesign
or Illustrator etc).
OpenType features can also be used in website layouts. You can easily style your text with OpenType
features using various CSS expressions – but make sure that your browser supports the features you’re
using.
flfi
flfi
Standard Ligatures (LIGA)
Standard ligatures are designed to improve the kerning and legibility of certain letter pairs. For example,
when this feature is activated, typing ‘f’ and ‘i’ will automatically produce the ‘fi’ ligature. Using ligatures
does not affect the spelling and hyphenation of your text in any way.
Small
small
Small Caps (SMCP & C2SC)
The Small Caps feature allows you to replace lower case letters with small caps. There are two methods: The
first one (SMCP) replaces only the lowercase letters. The second method (C2SC) replaces the capital letters too
and it also replaces glyphs like the questionmark, at-sign, slashes etc. – if the corresponding glyphs are available.
£0123456789
£0123456789
£0123456789
£0123456789
Tabular figures (TNUM)
Tabular figures (TF) are for use in tables where numerals need to be aligned vertically. Tabular figures
are available as a OpenType feature and have a fixed width in all weights. In Tuna fonts also old-style
tabular figures are included.
1983£396
1983£396
Old-style Figures (ONUM)
The proportional old-style figures feature changes standard figures to old-style figures which
work well in running text, as they have the same proportions as lower case letters with their
ascenders and descenders. There are also matching currency symbols for these numbers.
Note5
Note5
Superscript (SUPS)
Replaces all styles of figures (old-style, tabular, lining) and letters with their superior alternates,
which can be used for footnotes, formulas, etc. Superior characters are adapted in stroke weight and
are also spaced more generously.
C2H6O
C2H6O
Subscript (SUBS)
Similar to the superscript numbers it replaces all styles of figures with their subscript alternates.
Mainly the subscript feature is used to set formulas.
13/4cups7/8inch
13/4cups7/8inch
Arbitrary Fractions (FRAC)
Besides the included standard fractions, other arbitrary fractions could be easily done by using
the fraction feature, which converts numerals in combination with a slash into fractions oriented to
the capital height.
Tuna Heavy 64 pts
El atún es un pescado muy popular en la alimentación de buena parte del mundo
Tuna Italic 42 pts
El mercado del atún se ha visto ampliamente impulsado por el desarrollo de las economías
de los países de Asia oriental, especialmente Japón, y por el impacto global de ciertos platos como en el caso del sushi.
Tuna Regular 16 pts German
Bio oder Fair Trade? Handwerk oder Siegel? In der Serie »Gewissensbisse« erläutert Theresa Bäuerlein Grundfragen des Essens. In der neuen Folge:
Kann man überhaupt noch Thunfisch essen? Ich esse wahnsinnig gerne Thunfisch – aber ich weiß, wie viel Schindluder da getrieben wird. Muss ich
aufhören, Thunfisch zu essen? Ehrlich gesagt: Ja. Zumindest wenn es um roten Thunfisch geht. Laut einer Analyse des WWF werden im Mittelmeer
schon 2012 keine roten Thunfische mehr schwimmen. Der Fisch ist so beliebt, dass Länder wie Spanien und Frankreich die Fangquoten weit überschreiten.
Hinzu kommt die illegale Fischerei. Sushi-Liebhaber sollten sich diese Delikatesse also jetzt lieber verkneifen, damit es sie ihn Zukunft noch gibt.
Im Grunde geht es bei dieser Frage aber nicht nur um Thunfisch, sondern darum, dass es überhaupt immer weniger Fische gibt, die man mit gutem
Gewissen essen kann. Der Thunfisch ist nur ein sehr bekanntes Beispiel für allgemeine Missstände im Fischfang – und vermutlich deswegen so berühmt
geworden, weil zu den Opfern des Thunfischfangs der Sympathieträger Delfin gehört.Fisch hat als Nahrungsmittel ein gutes Image, das längst nicht
mehr gerechtfertigt ist. Viele Fische sind mit Umweltgiften belastet, die meisten Arten überfischt. Fischer ziehen also mehr Tiere aus dem Wasser,
als durch natürliche Vermehrung nachwachsen können. Aquakulturen, in denen Fische gezüchtet werden, sind nur dann eine Alternative, wenn man
Massentierhaltung in Ordnung findet: Die Probleme an Land und im Wasser (hoher Energieaufwand, Antibiotika, Tierquälerei) sind hier sehr ähnlich.
Aber auch die Fangmethoden im offenen Meer lassen, milde gesagt, zu wünschen übrig: Beim Thunfischfang werden Millionen anderer, unerwünschter
Tiere als Beifang sinnlos getötet. Darunter nicht nur Delfine, sondern auch Haie, Schildkröten, Vögel und sogar Wale.
Tuna Regular 16 pts English
U.S. boats are set to be locked out of the world’s best tuna-fishing waters after reneging on a deal with 17 Pacific states, amid a slump in prices
for the fish sold in cans in supermarkets all over the country. The standoff means U.S. boats cannot access seas where around half of the world’s
skipjack tuna are caught each year. It is also endangering a vital revenue stream for some of the world’s poorest nations. A group of Pacific
island states—which includes small islands and atolls such as Tuvalu, Tokelau and the Marshall Islands—along with New Zealand and Australia are
refusing to issue fishing licenses to around 36 U.S. vessels to trawl in their waters after their owners, typically tuna-supply companies or
individuals, refused to meet payments agreed in August last year. “These are the most attractive fisheries in the world and there are boats dying
to fish in these waters right now but they can’t go and fish,” said Transform Aqorau, chief executive officer of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement,
a grouping of eight of the islands which control most of the regions’ best fishing grounds. Without a resolution, U.S.-owned fishing boats—often
based in American Samoa, a U.S. Pacific territory—risk losing the roughly 300,000 tons of catch, mainly skipjack, they normally net annually in
the region. That tuna is mostly processed into canned form, often in American Samoa as well. Fishery license sales generate around $350 million
annually in total for small states such as Kiribati and Tuvalu, where around 20% of the population lives on less than US$1 a day. More than a
quarter of that fishing revenue comes from the U.S., the Asian Development Bank estimates. Pacific island countries aim to both raise revenue
and manage tuna stocks by selling fishing days each year to either countries or companies, which in turn allocate them to different vessels.
The minimum price for one fishing day is $8,000. Some of the islands are already struggling because of the way in which El Niño has affected
fish migration patterns this year, reducing the amount of tuna in areas they control, said Christopher Edmonds, a senior economist at the ADB.
The current dispute first arose in November when the U.S. government asked for significant changes to the August agreement it made on behalf
of the American Tunaboat Association. It had agreed to pay $68 million so that its member boats could fish for 6,250 days collectively. The first
quarterly payment toward that was due at the end of December, in time for licenses to be issued at the start of January. The association now wants
to cut the fishing days by 30% and reduce its payment by $23 million. The U.S. is entitled to its allocation of fishing days under a nearly
30-year-old treaty that is linked to a US$21 million annual aid payment to the islands. “The issue is simply that the U.S. fleet cannot afford
to buy the number of days,” said Brian Hallman, executive director of the American Tunaboat Association based in San Diego. “The economic situation
for the U.S. fleet has been worsening, and is so dire that many vessels are on the edge of bankruptcy, and boats are dropping out of the Treaty.”
Mr. Hallman said ample global tuna stocks was behind the recent drop in tuna prices, thanks to an increasing number of boats fishing for the catch
globally. Skipjack tuna is currently selling at $950 a metric ton in Thailand, a major processing location, having nearly halved since July 2014
when it was selling for $1,820 a metric ton. Meanwhile, fishing costs have risen: in 2010, the U.S. paid around $30 million to access the fishing
grounds now in dispute, compared with the $90 million they agreed to pay this year. Negotiations continue between the parties but until an agreement
is reached the U.S. fleet will remain docked in American Samoa. The Pacific states are currently “testing the waters” to see if they can sell the
fishing days the U.S. wishes to give up, said Wez Norris, Deputy Director-General of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency, which negotiated
last year’s agreement on behalf of the Pacific states. A U.S. State Department official said “the best way forward for all parties would be for
the Pacific Island parties to revise the terms for the U.S. fleet for 2016.” “It is a huge concern for us that our boats can’t fish in their
traditional fishing areas and deliver fish back to American Samoa,” said Joe Hamby, Chief Operating Officer at Tri Marine Management, which produces
tuna brand Ocean Naturals and supplies tuna to supermarket chain Costco. Canned tuna accounts for 93% of American Samoa’s exports.
Tuna Regular 16 pts Spanisch
Características comunes a los túnidos es la presencia de dos aletas dorsales, generalmente bien separadas, la primera soportada por espinas y la
segunda por rayas blandas (figura 1). Su cuerpo es rechoncho, enteramente cubierto de escamas, mayores en la parte anterior que las del resto. Posee
un dorso azul oscuro y vientre plateado, sin manchas que le permite mimetizarse con el medio acuático. En los ejemplares jóvenes se presentan líneas
verticales y puntos claros en la parte baja del cuerpo. Las aletas son de color gris azuladas. Su talla oscila entre 3 y 8 metros y su peso puede
variar entre 400 y 900 kg. Es un pez emigrante y pelágico, que nada cerca de la superficie formando pequeños bancos. Busca aguas con temperaturas
superiores a los 10 °C (de 17 a 33 °C). Alcanza la madurez sexual a los 4 o 5 años, cuando mide de 1 a 1,2 m (pesando de 16 a 27 kg). Se estima que su
vida media es de 15 años.Los atunes son pescados que admiten una gran diversidad de preparaciones culinarias, ya sea en fresco o en conserva (atún en
conserva). Las tajadas o puestas que se extraen de los mismos son variadas: rodajas, ventresca (vientre), ijada, etc. Para su consumo en fresco se preparan
asados o cocinados como parte de platos populares: sorropotún en los pueblos costeros de la comunidad de Cantabria, marmitako en los del País Vasco, o el
patacó en la cocina tarraconense (Cataluña). Los atunes son pescados que admiten una gran diversidad de preparaciones culinarias, ya sea en fresco o en
conserva (atún en conserva). Las tajadas o puestas que se extraen de los mismos son variadas: rodajas, ventresca (vientre), ijada, etc. Para su consumo
en fresco se preparan asados o cocinados como parte de platos populares: sorropotún en los pueblos costeros de la comunidad de Cantabria, marmitako en
los del País Vasco, o el patacó en la cocina tarraconense (Cataluña). En algunos países de América Latina se usan para elaborar el cebiche. Cuando se
someten a tratamiento de conservación mediante la salazón, se obtiene otro producto típico: la mojama.
Tuna Regular 12 pts French
De nombreuses marques proposent par ailleurs des produits élaborés à partir de thon tropical et à des prix plus abordables.
C’est alors principalement le thon albacore qui est utilisé, aux dépens du thon listao. Or, les populations de thons albacore sont partout exploitées
à leur maximum. Alors que le listao, peu utilisé, est quant à lui le seul thonidé majeur qui n’est pas dans un état « vulnérable » ou « presque menacé
» selon l’UICN. Un bien curieux paradoxe. Les seules marques distribuées en France à proposer du listao sont Fish4Ever et Pain de Mer. Sur ce point, le
marché du bio, focalisé sur ces espèces « nobles », mais exploitées à leur maximum ou surpêchées, n’est donc guère exemplaire. L’argument du goût
généralement avancé par les conserveurs et distributeurs pour justifier l’attrait de l’albacore ne tient pas: un thon entier listao à l’huile peut être
délicieux. Tout dépend de la méthode de pêche, de son mode de préparation, à partir notamment de poisson frais ou congelés, et de la qualité de l’huile.
Deuxième critère d’importance: comment ces thons sont-ils pêchés ? Les produits disponibles dans les magasins bio se différencient là très largement,
et heureusement, de ceux de la grande distribution. Toutes les marques emboîtent du thon capturé à la canne et à l’appât vivant. Cette technique de
pêche consiste à attirer et fixer les bancs avec des appâts et puis de capturer les thons un par un à la canne. Elle se pratique au large de l’Afrique
de l’Ouest, aux Canaries, aux Açores, mais aussi aux Maldives et en Indonésie. Si, jusqu’à la fin des années 60, la pêche à la canne était la principale
méthode utilisée à l’échelle mondiale, elle est aujourd’hui à l’origine de moins de 10 % du total des captures. C’est pourtant la plus respectueuse
à la fois des populations de thon et des écosystèmes marins puisqu’il n’y a pas de prises accessoires. C’est aussi celle qui garantit la meilleure
qualité de la chair et le meilleur produit final puisque le poisson meurt rapidement une fois hors de l’eau. Rappelons que la grande distribution
propose quant à elle très majoritairement – à l’exception notable de Système U – des thons capturés à la senne, un filet tournant de surface, et par
de grandes unités de pêche, les thoniers senneurs aidés par des dispositifs de concentration de pêche (DCP), des radeaux dérivants qui servent à
agréger le thon. D’où viennent les thons tropicaux pêchés à la canne qui alimente le marché bio ? Curieusement, l’information du consommateur ne
semble pas une priorité : à l’exception de Fish4Ever, et dans une moindre mesure Pain de Mer, aucune marque ne fournit sur l’emballage d’information
précise sur l’origine du thon tropical, quant à la zone et aux lieux de pêche. Pour le savoir, il faut faire le siège des services consommateurs.
Résultat: le thon est originaire de pêcheries indonésiennes pour le leader, Le Phare d’Eckmühl, et généralement des canneurs espagnols travaillant
au large du Sénégal pour tous les autres. Fish4Ever, l’un des seuls pure players du marché, privilégie quant à lui du thon listao capturé par des
canneurs aux Açores et offre ainsi au consommateur français le thon tropical le plus « local » possible.
Process
The type design was hammered out in a 3-year ping-pong like collaboration of the type designers Felix Braden and Alex Rütten. During the process the design
went through a lot of changes – some regarding the whole design, others concerning only details.
Especially when you’re working on a type design project, which can take a little time, it is a great benefit to get a second opinion on your work. Otherwise
you easily loose the necessary distance to what you’re currently working on. Of course you have to be open for solutions that may be not always your first
choice. So the whole process took place in a close dialog, focussing on screen optimization, legibility in long texts and the formation of a distinct character
for use in headlines.
The first draft was drawn and revised by hand to give the font a natural, almost written character. Unlike most humanistic fonts the basic forms were developed
in a drawing process on the computer. The basic letter forms were drawn with a very wide broad-nibbed pen and then digitalized. At that point it had a rather 50’s
style look, and we both agreed that it looked a little bit stiff
Thats why we added more individuality and funkyness in the next design step. Repeating and static elements were taken out and superseded with vivid details and
seemingly organic elements. We added asymmetrical rounded serifs and a calligraphic look, resulting in a friendly, modern font with plenty of energy. While remaining
functional, with exceptional reading performance on screen, the basic design skeleton wasn’t changed very much.
Also the number of glyphs within the character-set was growing during that period of the process. All the numerals were generated with RMX-Tools, open-type
features were added and then of course the kerning had to be done as well.
Then finally we generated the fonts from the multiple-master file and handed the fonts files over to Yanone, who was happy to participate and immediately agreed
to do the hinting. From then on it only took a litte time and the final fonts were generated.
Designers
Felix Braden
“What is special about Tuna is that we merged our different type design approaches into one harmonious result.”
Felix is a graphic designer living in Cologne. He studied communication design at the Trier University of Applied Sciences and worked
with Jens Gehlhaar at Gaga Design. He co-founded Glashaus Design, is art director at MWK Cologne and works as a freelance type designer.
In 2000, he founded the free font foundry Floodfonts and designed numerous free typefaces which are available as webfonts via Typekit.
His commercial fonts are distributed by FontShop International (FF Scuba), Myfonts (Capri, Sadness, Grimoire), URW++ (Supernormale) and
Volcanotype (Bikini). His most recent release FF Scuba is one of the winners of the Communication Arts Typography Annual 2013,
and was a honorable mention in Typographica’s Favorite Typefaces of 2012, in Typefacts Best Fonts of 2012, in FontShop’s Best Types 2012,
and in Typecache’s other favorite typefaces of 2012.
Alex Rütten
“Collaboration is fun for me – and it is a big plus for the design too. Going through all that process by yourself can be quite painful.”
Alex is typeface- and interface designer and partner of the berlin based design studio Formsport. He also studied communication design at the University
of Applied Sciences in Trier. After graduation he worked as a freelance graphic designer and later as an art director for several design agencies.
In 2002 he moved to Berlin, where he mainly worked as a developer for interactive applications and as editor-designer. His typefaces are available through
Linotype and FontShop International. 2009 he won the TDC Award for his first typeface “Ginkgo” and 2011 for “Suhmo”.
In 2010 “Ginkgo” was also nominated for the German Design Award.